By Tobias Winright
When I was 19 and a full-time undergraduate, I joined a metropolitan sheriff’s department. I worked full-time during the midnight shift, had to use force on occasion, and certainly suffered my share of bruises and cuts. Like many of my fellow officers, I sought to serve and protect others.
Still, I wrestled with questions about the violence, racism, sexism, and economic disparities in the criminal justice system, and as a follower of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, I struggled with imagining him wearing my uniform, carrying a firearm.
After graduation, I resigned and went to graduate school to study theological ethics. There, I discovered that, although Christian thinkers had long addressed the morality of violence, they focused mostly on the military and war. Hardly anyone wrote about policing from a Catholic theological perspective, even though many Catholics the world over were police officers, including in Vatican City. If they dealt with criminal justice at all, theologians tended to concentrate on capital punishment.
One of the reasons they had overlooked policing is that the modern police department appeared on the historical scene relatively recently, with Sir Robert Peel’s New Police of Metropolitan London in 1829. Importantly, Peel was intentional about the police being different from the military: They were relatively unarmed, and embedded within and working in partnership with local communities.
Sadly, when transplanted to the United States, the institution of the police department in the northern states became enmeshed in political and economic corruption, while those in the southern states were associated with slave patrols. Over time, U.S. police departments became increasingly armed, militarized, and racially unjust. (Notably, even some college police departments — hopefully, none of them Jesuit — have acquired military equipment and weapons in recent years.)
It was against this historical backdrop, and not long after the 1991 beating of an unarmed Black man named Rodney King during his arrest by Los Angeles police officers, that I wrote my doctoral dissertation, which examined policing from a Christian social ethics perspective.
And now, 30 years later, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the trial of his killer, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin — not to mention many other disturbing police-involved deaths of Black people, including Michael Brown in Ferguson near where I live and teach and Brionna Taylor in Louisville — public attention has turned more than ever to the police. Marches, demonstrations, and movements such as Black Lives Matter, which include the voices of many college students and faculty, have jolted society and amplified calls for police reform, defunding, or abolition.
It is no surprise, then, to hear calls for change on campus. In May 2021, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article titled “Why We Should Abolish the Campus Police,” by American studies scholar Davarian L. Baldwin, who argued that “colleges are the perfect place to rethink policing more broadly.”
Following upon Baldwin’s argument and writing as a former corrections officer, reserve police officer, police academy ethics instructor, and a Catholic theological ethicist, I propose that public safety and police departments at Jesuit colleges and universities collectively commit to becoming laboratories for the application of Jesuit mission and values — as well as the principles of Catholic social teaching.
While the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities emphasizes the “One Shared Mission” of its member institutions, I did some research on public safety and policing practices at fifteen of these institutions and found somewhat less in common.
Of course, differences may be due, in part, to campus size and location. Some have departments of public (or campus) safety, others have police departments, and still others have public safety and police departments. Some employ unarmed officers, others have armed officers, and still others have both unarmed public safety officers and armed police officers. Commissioned, sworn officers who carry firearms may be authorized by the state and local government to use force, including deadly force, on campus and, depending on local laws, even in areas surrounding campus. Interestingly, some campuses with armed officers decided to arm only in recent years, and some institutions’ websites do not say whether their officers are armed or not.
Larger institutions, places like Boston College and Saint Louis University, tend to have armed officers, regardless of whether they are called police or public safety officers. For their part, mid-sized Seattle University’s public safety officers do not carry firearms, while the smaller Spring Hill College has a “mix of public safety and police officers.”
Nearly all of the institutional websites list services provided by officers, such as traffic direction or escorting students. Many highlight their community orientation and their partnerships with local law enforcement.
Concretizing their community orientation and commitment to serving students, Loyola Marymount University public safety officers share information about their services during a new student involvement fair. Photo courtesy of Loyola Marymount University.
Most departments, but not all, lift up mission, vision, and values in their profiles. Gonzaga University, for instance, emphasizes distinctively Jesuit values and practices like cura personalis (“the care and concern for the dignity of the whole person”). Boston College indicates that the “department’s policies, practices and services are aligned with the University’s Jesuit traditions to search for truth in every discipline, foster the desire to learn, and live justly together.” Seattle University goes a bit further in showcasing their commitment to “values, and most of all, to the just, compassionate, and equitable treatment of all people.”
Core values that tend to be listed on Jesuit campus security websites include integrity, honesty, respect, accountability, professionalism, empathy, service, and fairness. But it is important to note that these same values are commonly invoked by local police departments across the United States.
As Tom Murray, chief of police and director of public safety at Loyola University Chicago, writes, “Our officers recognize that working in a University setting is very different than other police departments.”
Indeed, I think this should be the case on all Jesuit campuses.
So, when it comes to campus security, it is time for Jesuit institutions to “rename and reframe,” to use the words of Catholic theological ethicist María Teresa Dávila. One step in the right direction would be to call those who serve on our campuses “peace officers” and make the practice of campus security follow the new name (which is actually an old name) that we give to those hired to do the job.
U.S. Jesuit institutions have a collective opportunity and responsibility to help our nation imagine more just ways to provide public safety, security, and policing at this moment in our history. Will we follow through?
Tobias Winright is associate professor of health care ethics and theological ethics at Saint Louis University and author of Serve and Protect: Selected Essays on Just Policing (2020).
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Loyola University Chicago.